The best ROTOQ you will ever read
by Two Brit Twits
Summary: Honest.


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ROTOQ Epilogue

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In the barren desert of the afterlife, Frank was sulking.

Not that he would have described it as that, of course, but there was nevertheless a distinct lack of stoicism emanating from his personage. He kicked a pebble out of pique then cursed when his unshod toe ached accordingly. Off in the distance, a gust of wind flared sand briefly and settled into the form of another figure. Intriguing. He'd seen a few other lost souls in this place before, but none so close and therefore sufficiently accessible to be worth bothering with. Picking up the glittery heels that he'd thought so precious in life (but were now distinctly annoying), he trudged over.

Several yards away, Magenta cursed to herself.

She'd given little thought to what the afterlife might hold, but she certainly never expected to land on the other side with such a hard thump. Already winded from trying to fight off a knife-wielding maniac of a brother on her previous plane of existence, she reflexively gasped for the breath she no longer needed, before it began to sink in that it made no difference to her, now. She stood up slowly and saw, with some disgust, that not only was her ghostly form marred by knife wounds, but that she'd died in her stockings, her boots nowhere to be seen, which would make navigating the afterlife rather difficult.

On hearing the approach of something, she spun around. Perhaps Riff had managed to maim himself in his fit of rage - if they had to share an afterlife then Magenta would see to it personally that Riff was in hell, regardless of whatever plane they actually inhabited.

Sadly, this was not to be. Magenta swore again - perhaps this _was_ hell after all. Realising she had nothing left to lose, she decided she might as well say what she pleased to her long-departed master.

"Oh, fuck. Not you," she said, by way of greeting.

Frank's lip curled. "I assure you, _dlenger_, the feeling is mutual." He eyed her up and down slowly. "I was aware your culinary skills left much to be desired, but really? Death by breadknife? How _sordid_."

Magenta arched an eyebrow, "Perhaps. At least my last moments weren't spent crawling up draperies, however." She had, in fact, got many years of amusement out of her recording of the takeover. "You always did like making a spectacle of yourself," she said, with the trace of a smirk.

Were his cardiovascular system still functional rather than fertiliser, it is likely Frank would have blushed. He'd been as heroic in death as in life, which unfortunately wasn't saying very much. Nevertheless, as ex-heir to the throne, he had the memory of his pride and he wasn't going to be laughed at by a serf.

"At least _I_ was dressed for the occasion. Not that there would have been one, if you and your pathetic brother hadn't had half-baked ideas far above your station." He sniffed; the translucent blood leaking from what had once been his servant was mildly off-putting. "Where is that snivelling little bastard, anyway? I never saw one of you without the other clinging on close behind."

Her teeth clenched. "He'll be sorry," she replied cryptically. "He couldn't so much as straighten his stockings without me." She'd always felt quietly confident in her sway over her elder brother; to have been so _sloppy_ towards the end, and finished up like--well, like _Frank_, of all people, was not a thought that she cherished.

"Oh, really?" A slow grin spread over his face. "I take it then, that he had something to do with your present state?"

Magenta's shoulders tensed. She knew Frank well enough that the tone of this conversation would have raised her hackles, when they were alive. He wasn't going to get anything out of her now. However, denial would simply tell him that he was close to the mark, a pointless display of weakness and so she merely replied, "He couldn't be trusted with a butterknife, you know."

"Nor a pitchfork," he replied, with not a little bitterness. It galled him to think that he had been so easily outwitted and by one so inferior; though if Magenta was telling the truth, then it would indicate that the plot had been mainly her doing. "Why, did he become a little tired of your accent, or did he merely find someone less _frizzy_?"

Magenta wondered how time was passing on Transsexual, and whether it differed to the afterlife. Perhaps if it weren't for her brother's paranoidal rage she would be Queen by now, her king having died in a freak pod-yachting accident on their honeymoon.

She loathed thinking she had anything in common with Frank, but narrow misses with the Transsexual throne did seem to be something they shared. Still, her chance to rule was entirely through her own cunning, unlike Frank's mere lucky birth. Perhaps it would be amusing to taunt him with this. "On the contrary, it was I who found somebody less greasy. Tell me, do you remember your cousin?"

"Not… Lardy Lordy?" Frank exclaimed, unsure whether to laugh or vomit. Both urges were swiftly replaced by indignation as he realised, "You would rather sleep with _him_ than..." he noticed her smirk and quickly launched an offensive, "Not that I would, naturally. I do have some standards, after all."

"Of course you did. _Standards_ were what we all thought of when we saw that delivery boy of yours." The corner of her mouth twitched a little, and she added, "At least _I_ did it to get the throne."

She went to kick at a nearby boulder in lieu of Riff's bony corpus. In doing so, she scraped at the hot, rough sand of the desert. Something shimmered beneath the red dust.

He glanced at the dirt, commenting casually, "The view is fairly tedious, merely the dearly departed and enough space for a few mourners." Not that he'd had _any_, of course. It had actually been quite unpleasant - after a few days of what he assumed had been drunken revelry they'd ejected his body into space, where the harsh vacuum had first puffed him up like a particularly grisly party balloon, then slowly desiccated him, water steaming away first followed by the dried flesh flaking off into an amorphous cloud of ex-Furter. It was like a train accident; he'd hardly been able to tear himself away.

Curiosity and a reluctance to dwell on what was a moderately revolting memory caused him to abandon protocol and squat down next to Magenta as she cleared a large rectangle of dust. There appeared to be a coffin and he was about to make a remark about how it was all right for _some_, when he noticed it was shaking in a most peculiar fashion.

As they watched in perplexed silence, the vibrations became stronger and more rhythmic. The coffin lid juddered, lifted and fell to the floor with a crash, revealing something that Frank had considered, but long discounted as being just too sick.

He sat back, a little green, then looked sidelong at Magenta, "My standards may have been... questionable. But better to have loved extensively and lost quickly, than to have spent the rest of my life living with a _corpse fucking psycho_!"

Magenta's mouth tightened into a hard, unforgiving line. "He won't live forever," she said darkly. "And when he returns to me, vengeance will be _sweet_."

At one time, that tone of voice would have sent surreptitious shivers down his spine, but now he merely nodded in agreement, then stood, and in a rare flash of chivalry, offered his hand to help her up. "Come. This scenery is distasteful and lacks suitable refreshments. I suggest we find an alternative area more suited to our tastes."

Even someone like her to quarrel with was better than lonely boredom. For now, anyway.

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Epilogue of the Epilogue

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They weren't sure how long it took. Even earthly deserts can seem endless, and this was far bigger than any found in the living world. Occasionally they'd consider scratching the sand to see how much time had passed, but the memory of That Time always deterred them. It may have been decades (it was certainly years) yet, bickering and squabbling, they reached the end and... not too unaffectionately, parted.

It was not until much, much later that each felt a tug somewhere inside, just behind the navel, that launched them out of wherever they were and deposited them back in the sand. Each was quick to blame the other and words ran high until they realised that they were not alone; off in the distance, a small shape had flickered into being - older, yes, but still recognisable.

They grinned, scooped up the knife and laser lying in the dust beside them, and circled like sharks smelling blood in the water.

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